Court hears of cure offered by Carmody

A daughter of a deceased 58-year-old cancer victim has told a court that Dr Paschal Carmody had informed her father he would cure him.

At Ennis Circuit Court, Mairéad O’Donnell said Dr Carmody told her father, John Sheridan, in October 2001, at his East Clinic in Killaloe: “John, don’t worry, we can cure you. We’ll get rid of this. You won’t die from it anyway.”

She said her father – suffering from liver cancer – reacted by saying: “Well I can’t ask for any better than that.”

She said it was “totally different to what we would have heard from other doctors and I was thinking, ‘God, maybe this is a breakthrough’.”

Mr Sheridan agreed to undergo a programme of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) treatment at Dr Carmody’s clinic and Ms O’Donnell said she told Dr Carmody she was concerned the PDT treatment wouldn’t be able to deal with deep-seated tumours.

“Dr Carmody told me that it wasn’t a problem as he was getting a new machine that would allow the PDT to penetrate deeper,” she said.

However, Ms O’Donnell said the PDT administered to her father “did absolutely nothing” for him.

She added: “He was made believe the PDT would work”.

Mr Sheridan of Kells, Co Kilkenny, died 11 months after the October 2001 meeting.

Counsel for Dr Carmody, Tom Creed SC, said there was no question of a cure on October 16th, 2001, and he outlined “treatment available”.

Earlier in court, children’s cancer specialist Dr Finn Breathnach said there was “no possibility of a cure” for Conor O’Sullivan in June 2002. He died in November 2002.

Conor went to the East Clinic to undergo a programme of PDT treatment after his parents, Christina and Derek, told the court that Dr Carmody told Conor he would cure his cancer in July 2002.

“I’m not aware of bone tumours responding to PDT,” said Dr Breathnach.

Mr Creed told the court “Dr Carmody would never have told a patient he would be able to cure their cancer, least of all to a young boy”.